European Myeloma Network (EMN) is a valued partner of the HARMONY Alliance and is organizing its 4th annual meeting on 20-22 April 2023 in Amsterdam. It will feature a EMN-HARMONY joint session (XI) on Saturday 22 April, 10.05 till 11.05 hrs. Focus of this special session is to learn about Big Data innovations and new tools to rapidly select the most promising treatment for myeloma patients.
The HARMONY Alliance is a public-private partnership of more than 140 organizations such as hospitals, research institutes, patient organizations, pharmaceutical companies, regulatory agencies, IT companies, and medical networks and associations such as EMN and EHA. Together, they have developed the HARMONY Big Data Platform and the HARMONY Datalake which contains anonymized data records from tens of thousands of blood cancer patients. This unique research infrastructure, with advanced big data analytic and AI tools, is being used to accelerate the development of more effective treatments for patients with hematologic malignancies (blood cancers).
In January 2023, HARMONY has identified more than 156,000 patient datasets for its Big Data Platform and has transferred more than 73,000 datasets into the Platform. The number of datasets identified for Multiple Myeloma (MM) was already more than 22,500. Careful procedures have been installed to ensure the anonymization and quality of the data. In addition, HARMONY data scientists have developed sophisticated methods for data harmonization and analysis. Dedicated Research Project teams are currently using the HARMONY Big Data Platform to answer critical research questions that cannot be addressed with other methods.
EMN is actively involved in the HARMONY research project since the start. The HARMONY-EMN research project aim to deliver important new insights that may benefit patients with MM in the future. For instance, a revision of the international staging system for MM was developed in a research project that was coordinated by the EMN within HARMONY. It concerns a simple prognostic staging system allowing a better stratification of patients with intermediate-risk newly diagnosed MM. The project involved many European sites.
In another research project (coordinated by Pfizer), HARMONY is exploring the possibility to use the HARMONY Big Data Platform to develop multiple historical control arm cohorts to help contextualize clinical trial research. At present, there are many approved agents and compounds under development to treat MM patients. Therefore, it is not feasible for clinical trials to capture every possible regimen in a comparator arm. Using data in the HARMONY Big Data Platform could offer a solution to this challenge.
Meanwhile, the efforts of the HARMONY Alliance efforts in other disease fields are starting to pay off as well, delivering novel insights into the biology of a variety of hematologic malignancies. Especially in the field of Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), HARMONY has delivered important new insights that may benefit patients in the future.
The joint session on 22 April will feature a general overview of the HARMONY achievements and the added value of working with the HARMONY Big Data Platform, a presentation of ongoing MM research projects, and a discussion about opportunities for new MM Research projects focusing on collecting Patient Reported Outcome Measures and Patient Reported Experience Measures.
Meet us in person
Joint session participants and EMN2023 conference attendees are invited to connect with us in the HARMONY Alliance booth (nr. 7) at the EMN2023 exhibition.
Data sharing is the key to improve the lives of patients with blood cancer. The HARMONY Alliance invites members of the EMN community to contribute data, propose research projects that exploit the HARMONY Big Data Platform, and use the associated Big Data and Artificial Intelligence tools to establish new patterns of association between data and outcomes.
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Public-private partnership for Big Data in Hematology
HARMONY and HARMONY PLUS are funded through the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), Europe's largest public-private initiative aiming to speed up the development of better and safer medicines for patients. Funding is received from the IMI 2 Joint Undertaking and is listed under grant agreement for HARMONY No. 116026 and grant agreement for HARMONY PLUS No. 945406. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA).
HARMONY Coordination Office
Institute of Biomedical Research of
Salamanca (IBSAL)
Salamanca, Spain
HARMONY Communications
European Hematology Association (EHA)
The Hague, The Netherlands
